Chapter 36
Kasik had been instructed to rest, but his body had no intention of letting him do that. Mind racing, he made his way through
the kancha and out a side door that let into the royal gardens. They were shrouded in darkness, the moon half hidden by a
sea of ashen clouds, and mostly dead. Winter was quickly approaching, and with it, Inti Raymi.
Soon, the kancha grounds would be full of esteemed guests invited to celebrate the winter solstice and the end of the Harvest
with the emperor. It made his skin crawl to think of it.
He had no plans when he left the kancha, only that he could not be within it while Nina was alone in Maicu’s bedrooms. It
was selfish, but he was glad to be given the night off. Glad to be away from them before he did something foolish. The only
thing that kept him from running back inside was the knowledge that Maicu would not touch her.
His plan involved Nina remaining untouched.
A rock skittered across the stone path. Kasik immediately ducked and then cursed himself for being so skittish. It wasn’t
as if he was doing anything he wasn’t supposed to, but he was thinking about something forbidden and the evidence of that
was clear in the lines of his body now hidden behind the half-dead foliage. His breath puffed in front of him. It was chillier
than he thought; it would be full winter any day.
All that was forgotten when he saw a body-shaped shadow dart from one side of the path to the other, toward the backside of the kancha where he knew there to be nothing but forgotten trees and the outer wall.
Quietly, he unfolded into a running crouch, careful to lift his feet and avoid kicking loose stones.
The shape did the same. It was as if they were floating over the ground.
He thought of the kukuchi that Shayim warned about, and the brevity in her voice when she spoke of them. The shadow moved
like a wraith, silent and deadly. It made Kasik consider the possibility of there being one behind their walls without anyone
knowing.
Kasik hid behind a wide stout bush, peering through the skeletal branches and hoping the shape didn’t see him. But they were
preoccupied with skimming their hands along the outer wall, wasting their time looking for something that he knew was not
there.
Then, suddenly, the wall shifted, and Kasik clamped his hand over his mouth to cover his shocked inhale.
A space large enough for a body opened up. On the other side, Kasik saw trees and the distant, almost undetectable flicker
of a torch. The body slipped through and turned back to place their hand against the wall again.
It was then that Chaska’s face flashed in the moonlight before she disappeared behind the stone.
After pushing every stone and shoving his fingers into every crevice of the wall, Kasik found nothing that explained the way
it had slid open beneath Chaska’s touch. He could think of no other explanation except that Chaska was the same as Nina: an
Ikara, a descendant of Killa and Pachamama. A being he had been taught no longer existed. He’d encountered three of them now
in such a short span of time, including Shayim, and he was beginning to understand that there were likely more of them.
Eventually, Kasik gave up and began the walk back to his room. He needed to rest, to think, to come to terms with the fact that he knew absolutely nothing at all.
It wasn’t as though Chaska was a friend—she seemed to barely tolerate him—but he had known her for more than a year, had seen
her day in and day out when he was at the kancha and had dined with her most days. They didn’t speak often, but he thought
they had spoken enough for him to take her measure.
The empress was aloof. Spoiled. Uninterested in politics, or so it had seemed. Kasik stopped in his tracks, remembering another
time when he had seen her sneaking through the kancha grounds. It was a wonder he hadn’t recognized her gait. Had Samaq been
involved in whatever Chaska was hiding?
Though he could no longer see the wall where she had slipped through, Kasik turned back to stare at it and considered whether
he should continue trying to find the hidden door. What if it was Samaq on the other side? He hadn’t witnessed his friend
leave the kancha or Vira. It was possible that Samaq had defected and was whisking Chaska away as he stood there.
Perhaps I should tell Maicu. The thought was fleeting, but it plagued his every step back into the kancha. Usually, he stayed in the kallankas with Samaq
and his men, but without them, the place felt unwelcoming. The men were timid around him, their typically loose lips pressed
tight and their eyes surreptitiously sliding to him. He had stepped one foot in only to step back out, the din of conversation
continuing the moment the door closed behind him.
But staying in the kancha meant potentially running into his tayta, which was, as luck would have it, exactly what he faced
as he turned down the hall that led to the room reserved for him. It was too late to turn around, but Kasik was tempted to
regardless.
“It’s late,” Atik said by way of a greeting.
It was unclear what his tayta spent the majority of his time doing.
They rarely saw each other outside the evening meals that Maicu insisted he attend, or times like these, when Atik seemed to go out of his way to find Kasik and demonstrate exactly how little he cared for him.
“Hello, Tayta. Is there something you needed?”
Atik pushed off the wall and blocked Kasik’s path. In the dark, his eyes looked completely black, like orbs of achilla had
replaced them altogether. Kasik wondered if they had always looked like that, or if it was something he was only recently
noticing, along with many other things.
“Where have you been?” When Kasik made to walk past him, Atik stepped to the side and blocked him. “Where is Nina?”
The uncertainty in Atik’s eyes made Kasik smile smugly “Don’t you know?” he asked, pleased that there was something he knew
and his tayta did not. “She’s with the emperor. Enjoying a cozy, quiet meal. He commanded that I take the night off and have
Taruc deliver her to his rooms.”
In the shadows of torchlight that shifted over Atik’s face, Kasik first saw worry, then frustration. It was unclear who they
were for or why he was so invested in Nina’s whereabouts, but it left him with a swirling suspicion in his gut.
“You didn’t know she went there,” Kasik said, almost to himself, his mind combing over the past with a kind of clarity he
had not possessed before. “You always know where he is, who he speaks with, what choices he makes. It’s almost as though he
is a tool. Your tool.”
“He is young and impetuous,” Atik said, eyes hard and voice dangerously sharp. He took a step nearer, and Kasik took a small
step back. “I have guided him with a firm hand as the gods have asked me to. I have done everything they have asked of me.”
“Do they ask so much of you?” Kasik asked carefully. He was trying to glean information, trying to understand the crazed look in his tayta’s eyes, the strange words that made it sound as though he communed with the gods themselves. Despite his dislike for the man, Kasik felt a tinge of panic.
Shayim had said Atik was like Dimas hunting Yuri to the ends of the earth, but Kasik had thought she meant it metaphorically.
Was it possible that it had been meant very literally?
No, Kasik decided. If his tayta was that powerful, the man would have flaunted it without caution. He would not be stalking
down halls in the dead of night and worrying about a capricious emperor.
Atik’s face quickly arranged back into its normal affectation of disdain. “It’s none of your concern,” he spat. “Your priority
is to keep Nina alive. Can you manage that? Or should I see to her well-being myself?”
The thought of Atik anywhere near Nina made him want to punch a wall. Or his tayta’s face. “Don’t go near her,” he seethed.
And then, because he was stupid and never learned, he added, “It is clear you cannot protect anyone, including my mamay.”
Kasik didn’t see his tayta’s fist heading toward his face until it was too late. It wasn’t the first time Atik had hit him,
but it was the first time he had done it so aggressively, as if he had lost all control and Kasik, for once, had pressed a
nerve.
Kasik doubled over, his hands on his knees, a glob of bloodied spit landing on the floor beneath him, his jaw throbbing and
his head spinning. Atik crouched and placed a firm hand on his shoulder. Kasik couldn’t tell if he was being held up or down.
“Your mamay thought she could influence me. Thought she had power here, and it was only once my knife was deep in her belly
that she realized she had none, and that I was not so weak. Do not tempt me, Son, to give you the same lesson.”
With a shove, Kasik fell back, the hem of Atik’s coat brushing Kasik’s cheek as he passed by.
The cold stone seeped into Kasik’s body and the nausea grounded him. He was awake, and what he had heard was not part of a
nightmare. Atik had just confessed to killing his mamay. All the years believing that she had died during childbirth, too
weak to fight an illness, too miserable to stay and fight for Kasik, and she had been murdered by the man he called tayta.
If he had known sooner, he would have gutted the man and left his entrails splayed on the floor around him and savored the
sounds of his agony. He would have reveled in the irony of it, filling his tayta’s belly with his knife only to empty it in
betrayal.
Had Aliyma known what was coming? Had she been scared? Had she had the chance to love Kasik at all?
How different his life could have been. How—
“Kasik?”
There was Chaska, the cloak she had been wearing when she disappeared behind the wall still atop her shoulders. There was
concern in her eyes as she slowly came closer. He knew he looked weak and pathetic, blood dripping from the corner of his